Macrons Sue Candace Owens, Accusing Her of Defamation

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte Macron, filed a defamation suit on Wednesday against an American right-wing podcaster who falsely claimed Ms. Macron is a man.

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Superior Court against the podcaster, Candace Owens, argues that Ms. Owens used false claims about the Macrons to “promote her independent platform, gain notoriety and make money.”

In a filing running more than 200 pages, the Macrons are suing for 22 counts of defamation and related claims, and are seeking actual and punitive damages (the amount was not specified), as well as legal costs.

The battle began in March 2024, when, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Owens “told the world” she would stake her “entire professional reputation” on the accusation that Ms. Macron, “is, in fact, a man.” Ms. Owens made the claim on her podcast, then carried by The Daily Wire, and repeated it in a post on X.

Ms. Owens and The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, severed ties that month over her antisemitic rhetoric, and she repeated the claim about Ms. Macron on her independent podcast and other platforms.

Ms. Owens “disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim,” the filing says, and “rather than engage with President and Mrs. Macron’s attempts to set the record straight, Owens mocked them and used them as additional fodder for her frenzied fan base.”

“Because Ms. Owens systematically reaffirmed these falsehoods in response to each of our attorneys’ repeated requests for a retraction, we ultimately concluded that referring the matter to a court of law was the only remaining avenue for remedy,” the Macrons said in a statement from their lawyer.

The suit also names Ms. Owens’s media company and the company that runs her website, which are both registered in Delaware.

“Candace Owens is not shutting up,” Mr. Jackson said. “This is a foreign government attacking the First Amendment rights of an American independent journalist.” He said that Ms. Owens had “repeatedly requested an interview with Brigitte Macron” and that the podcaster would not be bullied.

The French presidency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Owens, 36, has become a lightning rod for controversy as a media personality. She said in 2017 that she became conservative in response to what she viewed as racism among liberals. She became well-known in conservative circles working in communications for Turning Point USA, a conservative advocacy group.

Ms. Owens, who is Black, co-founded the Blexit Foundation in 2019 to encourage Black Americans to reconsider their political affiliations. In 2022, she made a documentary critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM.”

She is married to George Farmer, a British American who worked for Turning Point UK and was chief executive of the conservative social media company Parler.

The Macrons have long been a subject of public curiosity and speculation. He was a teenager when they first met, and she, who is 25 years his senior, was his teacher. Recently, after Ms. Macron, 72, was caught on camera pushing Mr. Macron, 47, in the face, the French president downplayed the episode, saying they were “bickering and, rather, joking around.” He added, “Everyone needs to calm down and focus on the real news.”

Mr. Macron has said little publicly about the false rumors targeting his wife. In rare comments last year, he told reporters, “The worst thing is false information and fabricated scenarios, with people who end up believing them and disrupting your life, including your privacy.”

The couple’s lawsuit contends that when they sought a retraction of Ms. Owens’s initial claim, she doubled down and “endorsed, repeated and published a series of verifiably false and devastating lies about the Macrons.”

Then this year, the lawsuit says, in an eight-part YouTube series called “Becoming Brigitte,” in podcasts, on social media and in interviews, Ms. Owens presented a number of “far-fetched fictions” about the couple.

Among them: Ms. Macron supposedly stole another person’s identity and transitioned to becoming a woman; the Macrons are blood relatives; Mr. Macron was chosen for the French presidency as part of a U.S. government mind-control program; and the Macrons are committing forgery, fraud and abuses of power to conceal those secrets.

Ms. Owens capitalized on the claims by selling merchandise associated with the couple, the lawsuit contends.

“Ms. Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” the Macrons said in the statement.

This month, a French appeals court overturned a ruling in a suit filed by Ms. Macron against two people accused of spreading claims that she is a man. The court found that the defendants did not have to pay damages, saying the false claims had been made in “good faith.”

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting.